Rope in the Kids

“We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

An old saying which carries more weightage today than it did yesterday, because of the environmental chaos that we seem to be hurtling towards.

At this point in time, in the vast cold darkness of space, we humans know of only one place which can sustain us - Earth. This is home. This is also home to various other creatures and life forms, many of which we are still discovering around the world.

Need of the hour is cooperative living

We live in an era where technology is woven into the very fabric of our everyday; from sharing our achievements on social media, finding online games our kids can play safely, keeping communication lines open between generations, using online explainers for understanding conic sections in higher education, making travel plans from halfway around the world, checking pollution levels before going out, checking weather data before making travel plans, watching cooking videos before dishing up something special, investing our money, to a whole bunch of other things.

Pondering over this for a short while will help us understand that these things are possible as a consequence of many people working together in the background. We might watch a cooking video for 3 mins and cook up a dish, but we could do it only because the platform was created, someone used it to make a video, and someone cooked the meal. We are not even going into the nitty gritty details of making a video!

As we slowly understand how interdependent our lives are, we also begin to see the use of knowing about the scientists who work on understanding these interdependencies. We need to use what the planet offers judiciously and wisely. People need to observe the various ways life is sustained in a complementary fashion. A child might observe a bird hitching a ride on a cow, but we need to get them to see what the bird offers in return - it cleans up the bugs on the cow!

Why bother about the kids?

The answer is simple - kids are the future.

They come into their own in their teens and establish relationships with their peers, which goes on to become the society of the future. Talking simplistically, if we do not get the child to observe the symbiosis between the cow and bird; a future society might not have that knowledge.

So what, one could ask? The collective knowledge that people hold consciously and subconsciously among themselves as a society is an ocean to which progressive generations have added. When we do not pass it on to the younger generations, this knowledge is lost. It might be rediscovered, but that is effort, which has to be expended all over again.

This collective knowledge, wisdom and memory is what will help generations to keep Earth as pristine as possible. Kids are the guardians of this planet we call home, ensuring that it remains a safe haven for their future generations. For that, we need to get the kids involved from their youngest years in the great outdoors. It’s not that the lives we have built within our homes is not warm and exciting, but our kids will benefit physically, emotionally and psychologically, from their time in nature. After all, we are part of the natural world.

Kids will learn to negotiate the unscripted and in the process, will see the interplay between the species, the interdependence of systems, the sheer beauty in various ecosystems, the cyclical nature of seasons, and the roles creatures and plants play. E.g. There are all sorts of reasons why we benefit from trees, some well-documented and many others only felt and not fully understood even today.

Although we have not plumbed all the secrets of this planet, by getting the kids to spend time in the natural world, we open up avenues for them to understand the value and importance of this planet we call home. Once our kids are attuned to the ways of the natural world, their preparation for guardianship of our natural home will be on track.

To wrap up

We might not all be ecologists, but as adults and parents, we need to look around this ecosystem that we live in, and become ‘observers’ of a sort. We should live lives more engaged with the natural world around us, and then we will have a vested interest in keeping it well for our future generations.

As digital natives, when our kids spend time outdoors, they can harness technology to:

• increases dissemination of information about our planet
• document the natural world for the future
• put across the concerns of the young
• rally the young
• see patterns we had missed
• share the joy of nature
• right the wrongs we made(hopefully!)
• avoid making the mistakes earlier generations made
• live more sustainable lives

Most importantly, they will see value in creating a committed band of young guardians in their future!